Re: solaris and exabyte 8500 tape drive

We had the same problem. We ended up doing a tar cvf to the tape with the norewind device. For example, tar cvf /dev/rmt/0n. Then, when you issue the same command with another file, it appends to the tape. If you were to tar to /dev/rmt/0 then the tape would rewind and overlay the previous file(s). Once all files are written to the tape you could mt -f /dev/rmt/0 rew to rewind it. Then, issue a tar tvf to read a set of files or do a mt -f /dev/rmt/0 fsr 2 to move ahead to the next set of files that you cvf'd to.

For example. tar cvf /dev/rmt/0cbn (files 1 thru 10)

                         tar cvf /dev/rmt/0cbn (files 11 thru 20)
                         tar cvf /dev/rmt/0cbn (files 21 thru 30)
then to read, or extract,  files 11 thru 20     mt -f /dev/rmt/0n rew,
mt -f /dev/rmt/0n fsr 2,      tar tvf /dev/rmt/0n

The only problem is that when the end of tape is reached the tar cvf just dies. Hope this helps,

Bob Klaus

Lisa Lewis wrote in message <7ahb3s$q64$1_at_usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>...
>My Oracle Sever is on a Solaris machine running 2.61. We have an exabyte
>8500 (I think) tape drive. I cannot seem to use tar rvf to add files to my
>archive, I get an error. The system guys tell me it is a known problem
with
>this particular tape drive and Solaris. They say I cannot use 'tar rvf'.
>Does anyone have similiar problems. What was the workaround. I want to
>archive my archive logs to tape several times a day. I don't want to have
>to do an entire 'tar cvf' everytime I want to archive my logs to tape. The
>system guys tell me to use ufsdump. Is this a feasible solution? I am
>nervous because when I read the man pages for ufsdump, it says the file
>system must not be mounted or I must be in single user mode.
>
>Thanks very much for any information!!
>
>
Received on Thu Feb 18 1999 - 18:38:11 CST